Reviews

Altar Boyz is set at the last concert of the tour of the Catholic boy band, “Altar Boyz”. We not only get to see the fabulous concert, performed by the quintet of boys - Matthew, Mark, Luke, Juan, and Abraham (Abraham is Jewish) but we join their quest to save souls, find the history of the band and get to know this very interesting group of young men.

Even though I have seen the musical before, it still leaves me with my jaw on the floor at the subject matter it covers.

The ticket website says it all - with a warning of strong language, gun violence, murder, suicide, drug use, fat shaming, sex and more.

Yet remarkably, the writers of the musical have handled the subject matter in a way that allows for these issues to be handled delicately, in a rollicking night of satire.

Alison Bechdel (Lucy Maunder) is a cartoonist, writing an autobiographical graphic novel – and so we travel with her, a ghost witness to her past.  It is a story about an American family – a family uniquely unhappy in its own way.  Alison always carries her sketch pad as she watches, and, sometimes with laughter, sometimes with regret, or embarrassment, sometimes with pain, records each memory.  As they become drawings, she asks, ‘Caption?  Caption…?’  And she is stopped, as stumped as we are because no simple caption could be adequate

Artistic Director, Miranda Hill, has steered this project for several years and successfully focused attention on the achievements of queer composers, singers and musicians. The many delightful, sometimes poignant, stories behind these works have been recorded and recounted by Hill in the most entertaining and endearing manner. These events are often an oasis or refuge for individuals whose sexuality is taken to be at odds with the mainstream.